Professional Documents
Culture Documents
SIDIN VADUKUT
Contents
questions and arguments, thereby ruining the tour for him, you
and everybody else. Or you can take it all in, make a mental note
of disagreements, and then revisit things later when your tour is
complete.
The latter approach may help you enjoy this book better.
In any case, eventually, all our conclusions and analyses will
be proven wrong anyway.
Just days before we locked in the final draft of this book,
there were reports of a major new archaeological excavation in
Nepal. A team of forty archaeologists led by Professor Robin
Coningham of Durham University excavated a new shrine
beneath the Maya Devi temple in Lumbini that potentially
moves the Buddha’s birthdate back by three-hundred years to
the sixth century BCE.1
As you might imagine, this has a significant impact on a lot of
historical research. Especially when it comes to events, people, or
documents that hitherto had been dated with respect to the life
of Buddha. Your author also had to make urgent adjustments to
one chapter to reflect this discovery.
What is to say that many thousands of such discoveries lay
buried beneath our temples, monuments, homes, forests, farms
and even highways? Who is to say that within weeks of this
book’s launch a new excavation in Delhi or Sanchi or Tanjavur
will render many of these chapters worthless?
This does freak me out a little bit. But that is history for
you. Onwards she marches, making fools of us and our petty
squabbles.
So that is the first thing you need to keep in mind—this book
does not aspire to be the final word on Indian history.
1
Elizabeth Day, ‘Archaeologists’ Discovery Puts Buddha’s Birth 300
Years Earlier’, The Guardian, 30 November 2013.
4 SIDIN VADUKUT
The second thing you must keep in mind before reading further
is that this book was almost entirely typed perched precariously
on the shoulders of giants. This book is the fruit of months of
poking and prodding through books and manuscripts at libraries
and numerous online archives. However this effort pales in
comparison to the people who work at the coalface of history—
digging up things, translating manuscripts, dating events,
preserving objects and piecing together historical narratives one
palm leaf page at a time. It owes everything to the work of at least
two centuries’ worth of Indologists and historians.
The chapter on the Chola expeditions, for instance,
would have been impossible if not for the work of Augustus
Frederic Rudolf Hoernlé, Georges Coedes and hordes of other
epigraphists, researchers and scholars.
The debt of gratitude to them is huge.
But along with that debt comes a certain historical narrative
thread. Pioneers in any field tend to set the terms of engagement
between the public and their innovations and discoveries. So
while we continue to analyze and criticize the works of Darwin,
Newton, Keynes or Hayek, we are still bound in some ways to
the tone and syntax of these pioneers and their work. (Or to
what we think is their tone and syntax.)
This is perhaps why some Keynesians still think that Hayekians
live in free market utopia, while Hayekians deplore the swagger
and condescension of their posh Keynesian colleagues.
Students of history are equally prone to the same bonds of
tone and syntax. Amateur students even more so. So do keep in
mind that my efforts in this book have primarily been those of
constructing an entertaining but accurate narrative of history
based on the work of others. However it is inevitable that their
biases and postures will have filtered through as well.
Indian history is particularly prone to this kind of thing.
THE SCEPTICAL PATRIOT 5
kp
6 SIDIN VADUKUT
2
Seminar by the South Asia Media Commission, 8 December 2013.
8 SIDIN VADUKUT
Calling journalists idiots was one thing. Calling nine out of ten
Indians idiots? The outrage was instantaneous.
It wasn’t that many people disagreed with the substance of
Katju’s pithy analysis. I think it is fair to assume that there are a
large number of idiots in any given random collection of citizens
of any country. The exact proportion of idiots is subjective. For
instance, in some cultures, anyone who listens to Pink Floyd and
was not born in the 1960s may be considered an idiot. Entire
Indian engineering colleges would be idiots in this case.
The problem, I suppose, was not with what Justice Katju said
but the fact that he said it. A retired Supreme Court judge. A
man of broad and deep scholarship. A man who should know
better than to resort to made-up statistics and punditry. What
were journalists for, then?
Before Justice Katju even had a chance to ‘clarify’ his
comments—another art form he has subsequently acquired
mastery in—two young Indians served him a legal notice. Law
student Tanaya Thakur and her brother Aditya Thakur said
that they would sue the Justice if he didn’t apologize for his
statements.
According to one online profile4, the Thakur siblings are
30 October 2011.
4
ಫTanaya Thakur: A Teenage Girl of 17 Years but Walks on the
Legendary Pathಬ, Ground Report India, 23 November 2012, from <http://
www.groundreportindia.com/2012/11/tanaya-thakur-teenage-girl-of-17-
years.html>, accessed on 3 February 2014.
THE SCEPTICAL PATRIOT 9
India’s Past
With the aid of science we had built mighty civilizations
thousands of years ago when most people in Europe (except
in Greece and Rome) were living in forests… The way out
of the present morass is to go back again to the path shown
10 SIDIN VADUKUT
But are these facts? Is all this history? Was the Justice stating
historical fact? Or repeating popular myths? Surely someone
who was a judge of the Supreme Court would know his fact
from fiction?
Surely people in high places, equipped with education and
scholarship, are immune to historical misrepresentation?
Perhaps somebody should check up on some of these facts
about India…
kp
the House? Or, will the Government come out with a policy
statement as to what exactly they are going to do with those
very significant recommendations made by the Knowledge
Commission?
The very next morning The Times of India reported the exchange
and Minister Puradneswari’s data with great enthusiasm:
36% of scientists at NASA are Indians: Govt survey
NEW DELHI: If you thought that Global Indian Takeover
was just a hollow cliche leaning on a few iconic successes
like Pepsi’s Indra Nooyi, Citibank’s Vikram Pandit and steel
world’s Lakshmi Mittal, there is a slew of statistics now to
give it solid ballast.
The extent to which desis have made an impact in the
US was reeled off in the Rajya Sabha—as many as 12%
scientists and 38% doctors in the US are Indians, and in
NASA, 36% or almost 4 out of 10 scientists are Indians.
If that’s not proof enough of Indian scientific and
corporate prowess, digest this: 34% employees at Microsoft,
28% at IBM, 17% at Intel and 13% at Xerox are Indians.6
kp
One of the biggest Hindi film hits of 2007 was the Akshay
Kumar and Katrina Kaif starrer Namastey London. The film
grossed some $15 million internationally, and told the story
of a British-Indian girl who is forcibly married off to a lovable
country bumpkin from Lassi Road, Bumpkinpur, North India.
The couple returns to London. Immediately, the girl rejects her
marriage and tells Akshay Kumar that she intends to leave him
and marry her English boyfriend.
She flies back to London only to be subjected to terrible
racism by the English. Which drives her into the arms of her
bumpkin bumchum. Perhaps the most popular scene in the film
is the one in which Akshay Kumar’s character ‘humbly’ reminds
a racist British man of India’s achievements:
THE SCEPTICAL PATRIOT 15
Brian Morton, ಫFalser Words Were Never Spokenಬ, The New York
8
Almost. But not quite the pithy one-liner on the airport wall.
Yet, this is one of Gandhi’s most popular ‘quotes’.
Why are we so easily swayed by facts forwarded by email? Why
do so many Indians believe that the Taj Mahal was originally a
temple called Tejo Mahalaya? Why do so many of us instantly
believe and immediately proselytize that ‘India has never invaded
any country in her last 1,000 years of history’ or that ‘The word
“navigation” is derived from the Sanskrit navgath’ without even
pausing to ask: ‘Is any of this actually true?’
That may be the natural question. But it is a tough question
to answer.
Instead, I decided, I was going to ask a bunch of simpler
questions. Questions that, hopefully, would have simpler
answers.
I was going to find out which of a handful of the most popular,
oft-repeated ‘India facts’ were actually true. How many of them
are rooted in reality? How many of them are make-believe?
This book is the end-product of a year-long pursuit of truth.
At the end of this whole exercise, I learnt—as you will shortly—
that India actually has, kind of, invaded other countries. That
plastic surgery was, kind of, invented in India. And that, among
other things, India both invented the zero and didn’t invent
the zero.
History, it turns out, is more complicated and interesting
than it looks.
ONE
That man, the real hero of our story, is the so-called ‘father of
plastic surgery’, Sushruta. And his path-breaking body of work
on medical science, often credited with spreading the wisdom of
ancient Indian surgery, was the Sushruta Samhita.
But was he really the father of plastic surgery? How much of
all this is true?
kp
holds him down by the legs, the other by the torso. The whole
procedure is being watched over by a fourth man and a woman.
The woman, who has just stepped into the room, holds a bowl
in her hands. She seems poised to swoop down and assist the
doctor in some way. All the men are dressed in a simple white
dhoti and nothing else. The woman is dressed in a blue blouse
and a saffron-coloured sari.
Underneath the massive print was a caption that read
something like: ‘Susrutha, the father of plastic surgery, in his
hospital in 600 BCE.’
That was the first time, as far as I can recall, that I’d ever seen
that print. But in the years since, the print has proven to be
almost as ubiquitous as the claim that ‘Sushrut invented plastic
surgery in India centuries before anybody else in the world’.
I’ve seen reproductions of that print in museums, government
offices, airports, textbooks, websites, coffee-table books. And
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it on a T-shirt.
And while the picture remains constant, the caption is prone
to variation. Sometimes it is a picture of ‘Sushruta operating on
an ear’. At other times, it is a picture of ‘A cataract operation’.
Sometimes, it is simply a picture of ‘Plastic surgery in ancient
India’.
This nebulosity is also a common feature of ‘India facts’ in
general. While the general ‘fact’ gets repeated over and over
again, the actual details vary widely.
When I first began cataloguing the themes I wanted to cover
in this book, Sushruta’s claim to have invented plastic surgery
was one of the first that got picked. The ubiquity of that picture
played no small part in that choice. I was convinced, in the
beginning, that it was a painting completed at some point by an
Indian commercial artist and had wound its way into the print
market, and then been replicated over and over again. Much
28 SIDIN VADUKUT
kp
and anecdote, but with our goals firmly in sight. Why? Because
I don’t want this book to become one of those social science
textbooks that turned so many of us away from Indian history
in our childhood. I want you to enjoy your reading. I want to
tell you about interesting things that I found while researching
for this book. And I want to give you some idea of the bizarre
inter-connectedness of things. (Even if I do sometime sacrifice
‘relevance’ for ‘awesome’.)
This is why you will read about a scandalous British murder
case, a Cambodian inscription and Persian taxation policy
amongst many other things in a book that is ostensibly about
Indian history. Because the stories and their connections were
interesting in the writing, and may prove to be so in the reading
as well.
In addition, our focus on enjoyable efficiency will also dictate
how we frame our questions and direct our investigations. For
instance the most comprehensive way to figure out if plastic
surgery originated in India is to comb through every single ancient
Indian manuscript, find all references to plastic and restorative
surgery, and then compare these to every such reference to every
other ancient manuscript in the world. And see which one is
the oldest. Are the Indian ones the most ancient? Jhingalalaho!
Job done.
Are they not? Fabricate some ancient manuscripts, you
patriot!
Kidding.
That is the kind of approach that management consultants
call ‘mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive’. That is the
kind of mind-numbing approach that works when you get paid
by the hour.
I don’t get paid by the hour. And neither do you, especially
not for reading pop-history books.
32 SIDIN VADUKUT
So what you will see in this chapter, and most of the others, is a
slightly more derivative approach to answering these questions.
For instance let us take the ‘fact’ facing us now: ‘Sushruta
invented plastic surgery in ancient India, centuries before
Europeans.’ There are actually several questions here that require
answering. Did Sushruta exist? Did he invent plastic surgery?
When did the Europeans invent it? Who came first?
Instead of getting mired in answering all of them, we will
start with the most basic: Who was Sushruta? What did he
know? When did he live? The answers to these questions could
enable us to ask further questions. And hopefully we will keep
chipping away till we verify this ‘India fact’. All the while keeping
in mind that Sushruta himself is not that important. We don’t
care if plastic surgery was invented in ancient India by Bijumon
Biryanveetil or Blossom Babykutty. All we want to know is if
they did this before anybody, anywhere else.
Now, several references to the origins of plastic surgery,
Parke-Davis’s advertisement among them, point to the fact that
Sushruta was the father of this science. And that the ancient
fundamentals of it can be found in Sushruta’s great work, the
Sushruta Samhita.
How accurate is this narrative?
Sushruta may be long lost to the mists of time. Copies of the
Sushruta Samhita, however, are easily available. And it is in the
pages of this document that we shall begin our hunt.
kp
about the author. And therein lies the greatest challenge with
certifying, leave alone dating, Sushruta’s existence. The text is
unquestionably epochal.
But who wrote it? And when?
The Internet abounds with Sushruta narratives. So do a
plethora of research papers, books and newspaper articles. But
arguably the most riveting, and the most detailed, discussion is
to be found in a three-volume English translation of the Sushruta
Samhita published in 1907. In the introduction to this work,
the scholar, translator and commentator Kaviraj Kunja Lala
Bhishagratna, dissects every known reference to Sushruta—or
anyone called Sushruta—in ancient texts.
Poor Bhishagratna clearly had his work cut out. Life in ancient
India, he says, was regarded as an illusion11. Contemporary
histories often talked of the lives of kings and famous men…
But they were intended more to elucidate or enunciate the
doctrines of certain schools of Ethics or Metaphysics than to
record any historical fact or event… Hence the utter futility
of attempts to explain a historical fact by the light of a votive
medal or tablet unearthed perhaps from the ruins of one of
our ancient cities. Such an endeavour serves, in most cases,
only to make the ‘darkness visible’ and the confusion more
confounded.
In other words, the more you tried to pin down the lives of
India’s ancients, the more you were prone to lose your way. Still
Bhishagratna soldiers on.
The first hurdle in his path is the origin of the Sushruta
Samhita itself. The version we have today is the end product of
at least one major revision of a pre-existing version. That revision
Introduction i, An English Translation of the Sushruta Samhita, edited
11
kp
14
British Medical Journal, June 1895, p. 1216.
44 SIDIN VADUKUT
Score
9/10. While the specifics of the time and place of this
invention can never be proven, there is little doubt that
by around 650 CE ancient Indian doctors had access to a
sophisticated body of medical literature including methods
of restorative surgery.
Suggested fact
Ancient Indian doctors were some of the world’s first plastic
surgeons. They developed techniques that spurred surgical
innovations in the nineteenth century.